【Haichuan Chemical Industry Site】The former site of Well 1 in Chongqing’s Shigouba during the war years
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This post was last edited by Desert Fish on 2020-8-6 at 11:40. In September 1936, the Resources Commission of the Republic of China established the Sichuan Oil Field Exploration Office in Youqigou, Ba County, to start drilling at this site. Drilling began in October 1937; this was the first time a rotary drill was used in Chinese history. The well that was drilled became the deepest natural gas well of its time, and it marked the beginning of the development of the eastern Sichuan gas field.
Historical development of Well Ba1: In the 1930s, news of oil seepage from Oil Gully spread throughout the country. Between 1930 and 1936, industrial figures from Chongqing such as Qiu Junqing, Chongqing’s mayor Pan Wenhua, geologist Ding Wenjiang, and the commander of the Sichuan Army, Liu Xiang, all set foot on this remarkable land to conduct geological surveys of Youqiugou. They concluded that Youqiugou had a high oil production rate and abundant natural gas resources, making it the most promising oil field. During that time, Liu Xiang even established the \"China Guangming Petroleum Co., Ltd.\" to prepare for oil extraction, but it was shut down due to a lack of funds, technology, and equipment.
In May 1936, the National Resources Commission began to set up an exploration office for oil fields in Sichuan; the first group of employees from the commission arrived at Youqigou on September 8, 1936. On October 28, 1937, drilling began on Well No. 1 in Shiyougou, Ba County – Well Ba-1. The rotary drilling rig used for drilling at that time was imported from Germany; since the purplish-red shale layers in the strata being drilled were very hard to penetrate, American hard-rock drill bits were switched to.
On November 25, 1939, when the drilling reached a depth of 1,402.2 meters in the fifth formation unit of the Jialing River Formation, an industrial-scale natural gas flow of 15,000 cubic meters per day was obtained from the Carboniferous formations. This was the first time China used a rotary drill to bore the deepest natural gas well of its time.
Telegram issued in the 37th year of the Republic of China regarding matters related to the Shigou Gas Mine